Motorola’s WS5000/WS5100 Wireless LAN Switches (v1.x,2.x software) allow you to provision a standby backup switch that would take over for the primary if some problem affected the primary Wireless LAN switch. This is a an active/passive solution, the primary will be active while the standby listens for heartbeats from the primary in a standby mode. If the standby stops receiving the heartbeats from the primary switch it will switch to an active mode and adopt the Access Ports and start providing service to the mobile units.

First we’ll telnet into the primary switch (sw16-wireless.reh.acme.org) and backup its configuration copying it up to the TFTP server. Second we’ll telnet into the standby switch (sw16r-wireless.reh.acme.org) and then download the primary switch configuration via TFTP and then restore the configuration into the system.

sw15r-wireless.reh.acme.org> restore standby sw15-wireless-reh.cfg
This command will reset the system and boot up with the new configuration.
Do you want to continue (yes/no) : yes
Restoring Stand By configuration from sw15-wireless-reh.cfg
Do you want to change Interface 1 static IP address(10.115.254.11)?
Creating the Event list...
Enter (yes/no) : no
INFO: Static IP address not changed.
Do you want to change Interface 2 static IP address(10.115.255.11)?
Creating the Event list...
Enter (yes/no) : no
INFO: Static IP address not changed.
Shutting down database main thread...done.
Rebooting the switch...
Connection closed by foreign host.

The standby switch should reboot at this point and should retain its original IP addressing. There is one last step required to make the standby switch a “hot” standby. The standby feature must be configured and enabled on both the primary and standby switches. The order in which you enable the standby feature is critical, so start on the standby switch by issuing the following commands;

We have quite a few Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5500s deployed throughout our organization. There’s a great new benefit in using the new hardware to help us test the cable plant remotely.

Here’s the text from the Nortel manual;

Testing cables with the Time Domain Reflectometer With Release 5.0 software, the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Series is equipped with a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR). The TDR provides a diagnostic capability to test connected cables for defects (such as short pin and pin open). You can obtain TDR test results from the CLI or the JDM. The cable diagnostic tests only apply to Ethernet copper ports; fiber ports cannot be tested. You can initiate a test on multiple ports at the same time. When you test a cable with the TDR, if the cable has a 10/100 MB/s link, the link is broken during the test and restored only when the test is complete. Use of the TDR does not affect 1 GB/s links. Note: The accuracy margin of cable length diagnosis is between three to five meters. Nortel suggests the shortest cable for length information be five meters long.

Unfortunately this feature is ONLY available on the 5510, 5520 and 5530 switches. Using Device Manager you’ll find the option on the port settings (a tab to the right labeled “TDR”). You can also use the following CLI commands;

The following document is provided as a basic guide on how to configure the Motorola WS5100 Wireless LAN Switch with release 3.x software. You should use the initial username of “cli” at the login prompt. At the username/password prompts you should use “admin” and “superuser” respectively.

You should connect to the console port a serial cable (null) with 19200,8,N,1.

The example below will configure Ethernet 2 as a trunk port with the management interface in VLAN 200 (10.107.255.199/24) and the default gateway as 10.107.255.1. The order of the commands is very important when you start to trunk the interface.

These codes can be extremely useful in troubleshooting wireless issues.

Value

802.11 or Symbol/WPA Reason Code

Description

0

REASON_CODE_80211_SUCCESS

Reserved internally to indicate success

1.

REASON_CODE_80211_UNSPECIFIED_ERROR

Unspecified Reason

3.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_STATION_LEAVING_ESS

Deauthenticated because sending station has left or is leaving IBSS or ESS

4.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_INACTIVITY

Disassociated due to inactivity

5.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_STATION_LIMIT_EXCEEDED

Disassociated because AP is unable to handle all currently associated stations

6.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_CLASS_2_PKT_FROM_NON_AUTH

Class 2 frame received from non-authenticated station

7.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_CLASS_3_PKT_FROM_NON_ASSOC

Class 3 frame received from non-associated station

8.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_STATION_LEAVING_BSS

Disassociated because sending station has left or is leaving BSS

9.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_STATION_NOT_AUTHENTICATED

Station requesting re-association is not authenticated with responding station

13.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_INVALID_INFORMATION_ELEMENT

Invalid Information Element

14.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_MIC_FAILURE

Michael MIC failure

15.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_4WAY_HANDSHAKE_TIMEOUT

4-Way Handshake timeout

16.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_GROUP_KEY_UPDATE_TIMEOUT

Group key update timeout

17.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_4WAY_IE_DIFFERENCE

Information element in 4-Way Handshake different from Re-associated request/Proberesponse/Beacon

18.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_MULTICAST_CIPHER_INVALID

Multicast Cipher is not valid

19.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_UNICAST_CIPHER_INVALID

Unicast Cipher is not valid

20.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_AKMP_NOT_VALID

AKMP is not valid

21.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_UNSUPPORTED_RSNE_VERSION

Unsupported RSN IE version

22.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_INVALID_RSNE_CAPABILITIES

Invalid RSN IE Capabilities

23.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_8021X_AUTHENTICATION_FAILED

IEEE 802.1X Authentication failed

44.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_PSP_TX_PKT_BUFFER_EXCEEDED

Symbol defined (non 802.11 standard) code. The Wireless Switch has exceeded it’s time limit in attempting to deliver buffered PSP frames to the Mobile Unit without receiving a single 802.11 PS Poll or NULL data frame. The Wireless Switch begins the timer when it sets the Mobile Unit’s bit in the TIM section of the 802.11 beacon frame for the BSS. The time limit is at least 15 seconds. The Mobile Unit is probably gone (or may be faulty).

77.

DISASSOCIATION_REASON_CODE_TRANSMIT_RETRIES_EXCEEDED

Symbol defined (non 802.11 standard) codes. The Wireless Switch has exceeded it’s retry limit in attempting to deliver a 802.1x EAP message to the Mobile Unit without receiving a single 802.11 ACK. The retry limit varies according to traffic type but is at least 64 times. The Mobile Unit is either gone or has incorrect 802.1x EAP authentication settings.

I’ve worked primarily with Motorola (formerly Symbol) since the early 802.11b FHSS (Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum) days. When 802.11b DSSS (Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum) came to the forefront I worked with the Symbol 4121/4131 Access Points (some of which were OEM’d for Nortel Networks at the time). The Access Points were very versatile and had a very extensive SNMP mib. I was able to write several Perl scripts to help manage the large number of Access Points that we had deployed at numerous locations and facilities. Symbol was the industry’s first company to design a switched-wireless networking architecture, pioneering the thin or lightweight Access Points (or Access Ports as they would come to be known as). The Symbol WS5000 Wireless LAN Switch was driven by LynuxWorks operating system. Later software releases of the WS5000 and later the WS5100 would use an internally developed version of Linux (I know their using Linux I’m just not 100% sure who’s developing it for them). The primary wireless design constraint with the Motorola WS5100 is the maximum 48 port Access Port adoption limit. The hardware can only support 48 simultaneous Access Ports in a single switch. At one hospital we have over 200 Access Ports and over 18 WS5100s deployed, 9 primary WS5100s and 9 standby WS5100s .

Motorola has just recently released the RFS7000 Wireless LAN Switch that promises to support up to 256 Access Ports. I won’t go into all the features, I’ll let you find that out from Motorola’s web site. Motorola’s recent Wi-NG software release (v3.x) also offers clustering options allowing around 2,500 Access Ports within a single cluster. In previous releases you needed to have a primary and standby WS51000 for every switch, with clustering you can now have N+1 redundancy within the cluster. The new software also sports a very Cisco like command line interface which is great step up from the previous CLI interface in their v2.x software release. Network administrators will also be happy to know that the same version of software will now run on all “Motorola Wireless LAN Infrastructure”, including the WS2000, WS5100, RFS7000 and AP5131. I’ve worked with all three types of thin Access Ports currently available from Motorola; the AP100 (802.11b), the Ap200 (802.11a/b), and the latest AP300 (802.11a/b/g). We’ve deployed these Access Ports using Nortel ES460, ERS5520 switches providing Power over Ethernet (PoE).

The web based console on the early (v2.x software) releases was a Java based application that was horrible to work with from a configuration and troubleshooting perspective. It was slow and would continually crash and lockup. In order to alleviate this problem I wrote a web based application so our network engineers and help desk could monitor the wireless network without having to launch the Java application. I wrote the application in Perl at the time because that was the language I was most familiar with and the most comfortable. The application uses SNMP to query the wireless LAN switch and then outputs the data to the user.

You can find the source code along with some additional details on my website under the Perl section. The application will only work against v2.x software releases. Motorola completely re-designed their software in their v3.x software release along with the associated SNMP mibs.

I just recently started looking a Meru Networks as an alternative solution to Motorola.